Monster
by ohyellowbird
Summary: It's been weeks since Violet brushed her discovery about Tate under the rug, and in that time she's grown curious. What really happened that day, seventeen years ago?


**A/N: **This fic is a collaboration between myself and the wonderful, talented, fabulous **whodreamedit** (formerly seenbean). I had written almost 3k words and was about to toss it in the trash when whodreamedit graciously agreed to have a look at it and worked it into something fantastic. If you haven't read them yet, i _highly _recommend all of her violate fics, especially her epic WIP 'Bleeds To An End.'

Enjoy!

* * *

><p>"Why'd you do it?" Violet says around her cigarette one dreary afternoon.<p>

She and Tate are curled up in bed together tucked waist deep under the covers. Rain patters gently against the windowpane overhead, the barely audible soundtrack to their lazy day. It's Thanksgiving break and Violet's got the week off school, sent home with only a yellowing copy of Catcher and the Rye to read for her English Composition class.

Vivien's hardly home anymore, happier outside the confines of Murder House now that Ben's not around to protect her from the menagerie of things that go bump in the night (and day and pretty much whenever the fuck they want).

Speaking of Ben, he turns up every once in a while to counsel the odd patient, or to probe Tate for information on Violet, or to snivel to Vivien about giving him _another_ chance.

But other than that, the whole week it's just been Violet and Tate alone in the house, scrambling for some semblance of normalcy in the aftermath of her little discovery about Mr. Langdon, the ghost of his jagged 'I Love You' still visible against the dull green of her chalkboard.

Violet is holding open Catcher and the Rye for the both of them to read, Tate propped up on an elbow, tight against her side, chin hooked over her shoulder to follow the painted point of her finger as it trails across each line.

He doesn't even pretend not to understand the context of her question, just catches her eye and smirks.

"I remember having to read this when I went to Westfield," Tate yawns, his hand slipping beneath the hem of Violet's thermal top, lying flat against her stomach, thumb dipping into her navel. "It was okay."

They don't need to get into this today, not when things have finally started to settle down between them. Violet barely ever flinches away from him now, and is only crying herself to sleep once or twice a week. She's stopped cutting, too - ever since that evening in the bathroom, when Tate (lips and teeth stained red with her blood) made her promise not to.

She hasn't explained why she's been so upset lately, but Tate's not stupid. The way her eyes glaze over sometimes when she's looking at him, fear ever-present in those brown depths, like he's some wild animal that might just up and tear out her jugular. Just for shits and giggles. Just because he can. She knows what he did - _what he is._

Sometimes he almost forgets himself. When he's just finished a session with Dr. Harmon and pushes open the door to Violet's room. When he finds her stretched out across the bedspread on her belly, feet crossed in the air, nose in a book. When her eyes flick up from the page to greet him. Right then he's almost just a living, breathing teenage boy standing in Violet's doorway. His name has never been in the headlines. He's never felt the weight of a semi-automatic in his hands. Never violated anyone's body with bullets. Never watched the light leave anyone's eyes nor heard the damning thud of their bodies as they hit the floor. He's never been shot dead in his own bedroom – _Violet's _bedroom, now - or woken up the next day in the basement, disoriented, confused, no longer flesh and blood.

"What was it like?"

Violet is staring at him, the cigarette poised between her fingers, eaten away to a fragile column of ash that dangles precariously over the edge of the mattress. There's something in her eyes, a darkness that mirrors his own, as if she can tell exactly where his mind has wandered to.

She searches his face and wets her lips, dog-earing her book and tossing it aside to give him her full attention. "What was it like?"

Couldn't they just go on forever without mentioning the undead pink elephant in the room?

Tate sighs heavily and reaches over to tuck Violet's curtain of hair behind her ear, his hand lingering at the hinge of her jaw, fingers skating down her cheek and tipping her chin up for a chaste kiss.

There would be no going back after this.

"Incredible." he murmurs after a long pause, aware that if he didn't engage her curiosity now it would only fester until it became something ugly and obsessive.

She sucks in a shallow breath and drops her gaze to stare intently at his mouth, fear curling onto her features. Maybe she was bluffing. Maybe she doesn't want to hear this or even acknowledge it at all. But it's too late for that.

"The car ride to class was the worst, tossing my backpack in – feeling how heavy it was, knowing it wasn't just binders and textbooks… it made this real distinctive clunk when it hit the floor. I thought for sure someone would notice. But nobody did."

Violet's mouth is slightly open, her eyes wide. She swallows heavily, tries to quell the tremble in her hands as she stubs the cigarette butt out into an ash-tray on her bedside table. Tate shifts off the bed, crossing the room to shut the door. No sense in anyone else hearing this confession – and you can never be sure who's listening. Not in a house like this.

He turns back towards Violet with a secret smile, crawling over the footboard of the bed to straddle her thighs, pinning her lower half to the mattress. She's watching him with wide eyes, her fingers picking nervously at the hem of the comforter.

"My dad had this old trench coat with a dozen hidden pockets- you know, like creeps in NYC wear, to sell you fake Rolexes and shit. It was perfect." Tate's mouth quirks up in a nostalgic smile. He reaches over to prize Violet's hands from the blanket, lacing his fingers with hers.

He can picture it all so clearly, finding his dad's old coat in the hallway closet, trying it on and realizing it fit like it'd been tailor made; that's when he knew he was really going to go through with it. His mouth waters at the memory.

Half of his mind falling away into the past, Tate brings one pair of their joined hands up to his mouth and presses gentle kisses to each of Violet's knuckles, watching her blink back the terror that threatens to send her sprinting from the room.

"I packed the pockets full of shells and assigned a name and a face to each one. I wanted to make sure I had enough, that I didn't leave anybody out."

Violet draws in a shaky breath and shuts her eyes, her fingers going slack in Tate's hands. Maybe she wants to imagine it for herself, but more likely she's just fucking scared. Scared that this isn't all just some sick joke. Scared that the boy in her bed actually got dressed for war that day, that he meticulously filled his coat up with the bullets he would later meticulously fill the students of Westfield High up with. Perhaps more importantly, the realization that he himself was filled with bullets, too – right here in her room, seventeen years ago.

Mostly though, she's scared that deep down she already knows these things are true. And she still wants him.

It's all there in the worried set of her brow, in the way she's turned her head, wanting to bury it into the soft cotton of her pillow, but Tate ignores the warning signs, just laughs softly, bending over to press a lingering kiss to the corner of Violet's down turned mouth.

"The first one was the hardest," he murmurs against her skin, "a girl waiting outside of the nurse's office; Ashley Madson. She watched me push open the front doors and walk inside. She didn't once take her eyes off me as I strode down the empty hall. Everybody else was in class. She must have been there to call home or something." Tate's hips lurch forward at the memory, a fire starting up under his skin. "She didn't even open her mouth to scream until the gun barrel was poised between her neurotically plucked eyebrows."

Violet whimpers and shakes her head as though she won't believe it, her eyes squeezing shut, but again, Tate ignores her. She started this. She asked. And now that they've started, he's got no choice but to finish. He cups her cheek and kisses her again, deeper this time, sucking her bottom lip into his mouth, dragging his teeth over it when he pulls off, his thumb stroking over her cheekbone.

Hesitantly, Violet opens her eyes to peer up at Tate from under dark lashes.

Tate grins manically and kisses her several more times; cheek, neck, the corner of her mouth - before rocking back to sit on his heels, hands cuffing Violet's waist.

"It was pretty gross seeing her brains splatter against the student council banner. Pink and red and chunky, kind of like runny scrambled eggs or something. But after that it was easy."

Maybe it's Tate's description of his first kill or maybe it's the way his cock stirs to life at the memory, but for whatever reason, Violet is suddenly shoving him back and jumping from the bed to dry heave into her waste bin.

Fuck. Tate doesn't even take the time to clamber across the mattress to reach her, just turns up at her side half a second later, sweeping her hair out of her face and inwardly cursing himself.

"God, Violet. I'm so sorry," he murmurs, smoothing loose circles into her back and pressing frantic kisses to her temple. "Let's just finish Catcher in the Rye and take a nap. This was stupid."

It was. Of course she would respond this way - she was normal. She didn't have something black living inside her, eating away at her goodness, at her light, like a cancer that delighted in what he'd done.

What he did was making her sick to her stomach. He was stupid to have thought otherwise…

Sometimes, when he was alone in the basement, when Violet was at school or pissed at him, Tate would replay the events of that day. Only he'd change the story slightly. Now, when he recreated it in his mind, there were not one but two pairs of footsteps echoing through the empty halls. In his fantasies, Violet was there with him. They walked side by side through the hallways, her small hands wrapped around a length of piano wire.

It would have been downright romantic.

Tate could have blown holes into people while Violet took their heads.

She could have helped him take those poor, fucked up kids somewhere better. Tate imagined the two of them as bloodstained angels, raising up the lost, frightened teens they slaughtered - taking them somewhere clean and kind.

At the end of it all he'd have a few spatters of blood on his face…but Violet…Violet's hands would be absolutely dripping with viscera. It would be under her nails, slippery against the pads of her fingers, smeared over her knuckles.

And then they'd kiss, right there, surrounded by a hundred lifeless bodies - the innocents, gone some place better. Her hands would slide up his cheeks and into his hair, leaving a slick trail of scarlet war paint, and they'd meet at the mouth, hungry and sated in different ways. His lips would taste like copper and she would fucking revel in it, lapping it off with her tongue, and then they'd abandon their weapons and peel out of their clothes and-

"Tate?"

By the time Tate comes back to the present, he's absently palming himself through his jeans and Violet has turned to sit cross-legged next to him, her expression carefully guarded, hands cupping her elbows.

"This shit gets you hot, doesn't it?"

Her tone carries no judgment, but even so…Tate wants to disappear, suddenly disgusted with his thoughts and his actions and how he really is truly hopeless, a sick fuck that's fallen too far down the rabbit hole to ever resurface again.

"I should go," he mumbles (once he finds his voice), his gaze fixed on the floorboards, too ashamed to even think of looking her in the eye. Violet is pretty…pure…too good for him. Too innocent. He should abandon this before he drags her down the same hopeless path he's damned himself to walk.

But Violet must disagree, because in response she reaches out and drags her thumb over the full swell of Tate's bottom lip. And then, silent still, she stands and peels off her top, lying back against the comforter and propping herself up on her elbows.

From where Tate sits (if he were looking, and not moping), he'd be able to see right up her skirt to where her maroon tights are stretched across her panties.

"Come here."

When Tate's eyes - black with shame and lust and darkness - find her laid out for him on the bed, knees parted and chest rising and falling with shaky breaths, he can't help himself.

He's right there between her thighs in an instant, hands splaying over the flat expanse of her stomach, his eyes devouring her lithe form hungrily.

This is why he loves her. Not because she's smart and brave, or because she hates everyone like he does, or because she loves Nirvana, or even because she's beautiful. He loves her because she accepts him, every part of him, even the bad parts (and really, when he thinks about it, he has to admit to himself that he _is _mostly bad parts).

When Tate's close enough, Violet cinches her legs around his waist and pulls him down by the collar of his flannel for a kiss.

"Finish your story," she breathes into him, her hands scrambling to push the over-shirt from his shoulders.

_Jesus. _Does she secretly like hearing about what he did that day? Is it making her wet like it's making him hard?

There's no time to contemplate it now, not when she's arching up off of the bed to reach him and running her tongue over the backs of his teeth.

"I hit up the guy's bathroom next," he mumbles against her lips, leaving her mouth to trail kisses down the side of her throat while she pulls loose the fastenings of his belt. It drops to the floor with a gentle thud.

"I didn't even see their faces before they folded in half and slumped down onto the tiles."

She whimpers and draws in a hollow breath, but her fingers don't stop tugging at the hem of his t-shirt.

Tate's painfully hard now, the heat of her sex an unbearable tease against the front of his jeans.

"God, Violet…" He rasps against her clavicle, mouthing his way along the curved bone to sink his teeth into her soft shoulder. He kneads her cotton-clad breasts with his palms, rutting gently against her core to keep from coming undone altogether.

But it's not enough for Violet. She makes an intolerant breathy sort of noise and writhes up against him, her hands sinking into his blonde curls, guiding his mouth to where she wants it now.

He complies with a groan, tonguing her nipple through the lavender fabric of her bra for a moment, his hands leaving her breasts to find the elastic of her tights.

They pause there though, hesitant. If he peels these down her legs it's game on. And she's a fucking virgin. Should her first time really be on the tail end of a lesson in homicide? And more importantly, should it be with him, a psychopathic murdering _ghost_? (Just for the record, no and no.)

He doesn't deserve her. They've got no tangible future together. He can't give her all the things she deserves. Fuck, he can't even take her out to dinner or the movies.

But she slices through all his self-loathing with ease. "Please Tate… please," she whines, breathless, and lifts her hips up from the edge of the bed, fingers tangling in his hair.

All of his doubts disappear in the wanton sound of her voice.

She wants this. And he, well, he fucking _needs_ it.

With her help, the tights are off her legs and balled up on the floor in seconds, Tate's teeth tugging down the offending material of her bra, his mouth closing around one pale pink nipple.

Violet responds immediately, hissing a broken, "keep… going…" and curling her hands into knots in Tate's hair.

But Tate's too busy to talk, the flat of his tongue rolling against Violet's hardened nub, teeth closing around it just enough to hurt.

His hands smooth up her calves and thighs, bringing with them her skirt, pushing it until it lies bunched around her waist, her striped panties bared to him now.

Good fucking God. He can smell her already, musky and sweet and all for him. His cock throbs neglected against the crease of her thigh.

"Are you wet for me, just from this?" he asks, his voice ragged with want as the fingers of one hand settle over Violet's center atop her panties.

He draws in a shuddering breath; she's not just wet, she's fucking sopping. Her panties are ruined, a patch the size of his palm soaked through the crotch.

Violet says nothing, just flushes pink and moans, grinding into the steady pressure of his hand.

Tate kisses her quiet as his hand slips beneath the waistband of her underwear. Violet's eyes have fluttered shut, her mouth open in a soundless 'o' as his fingertips ghost over her slit. Running his tongue along the arch of her lip, he pulls back to watch her face for a reaction, taking pleasure in the tightening of her eyebrows, in the small moan that escapes her throat.

"I want you… to keep… telling me…" she manages, her breathing raw and staggered.

But Tate's finding it hard to keep his mind on anything but the dampness between Violet's legs. He tugs down her panties and presses his hips against hers, aching to feel her tightness around him. Then, flinching at the wonderful pressure, he nods, closing his eyes for just a second, trying to remember where he was up to.

"I shot a few more up on my way to the library. I guess I wasn't planning it so much by that point. I was having fun. Nobody was coming to stop me. People were running… screaming… but all I could hear in my head was this fucking music. This cheerful, up-beat tune. It was peaceful almost. Like I was taking command of the chaos. 'Cause I knew, with absolute fucking certainty, that what I was doing was the right thing."

He's paused over her now, his hips stilling as he looks down at her laid out across the comforter. Her eyes are open too, staring up at him, wide but no longer so frightened. He sees something reflected in them…something he saw the first day he laid eyes on her, drawing that razorblade over her wrist in the bathroom. It's a flicker of darkness; the thrill of evil, of the delight you can take in the taboo, in what other people might consider 'wrong'. Her chest is rising and falling heavily. She drops her hands to his waist, tugging at the bottom of his tee-shirt.

Tate gets the hint and rocks back onto his haunches in order to pull off his shirt. Violet's hands return to his waist instantly, trembling and curious, trailing up the pale, unblemished skin of his chest.

She stares at him, expression unreadable. She's wondering where the bullet holes are.

Tate takes his bottom lip between his teeth, suddenly nervous. He's never shown anyone this before. And he can't…not yet. She'll see it soon enough.

"I ended up in the library," he continues instead, leaning back down to bite her gently on the neck as her hands move to his hips, fumbling with the zipper on his jeans. Her pulse feels sinful between his teeth. "By then the rest of the school was silent. Most of the staff and students had evacuated. The rest were either dead or injured. The hallways were stained with blood." He pauses then to roll his tongue against the soft hollow of Violet's throat, his inhalation snagging at the memory of those white walls painted red. "You could feel the panic in the air, like electricity. Like a fucking drug."

He lets out a shuddering breath as Violet's hand suddenly slips inside his jeans to confidently palm his rock hard erection.

"Go on," Violet urges, feeling the dampness through Tate's underwear, hot and sticky. She's desperate for him, needs to feel what it's like to have him inside her, all that darkness. Her cheeks are flushed, her brow damp with sweat; the pressure between her thighs is unbearable.

Tate lifts up to squirm out of his jeans, kicking them off his legs and onto the floor with the rest of their clothing. Then he reaches for her again, grabbing her by the wrists and pinning her to the mattress.

"If you want me to finish," he growls, his hips rolling against hers, hard, "you're gonna need to quit that."

Violet just smirks, her pelvis arching up to meet his.

Tate can't handle this anymore. They've gone too far – both physically and emotionally – in the past hour. There's no use pretending this isn't happening; it is, and it will, and he's out of his underwear before he has any more time to question himself. Maybe it's not wise, but fuck wisdom. There's a kind of twisted romance in all this. She's listening to him relive one of his darkest moments, and she isn't running away. She isn't even flinching. She wants him more than ever.

His cock bobs free, heavy and leaking against her hip. And he can't help but hiss as he parts her thighs and lines their bodies up, his blunt head nudging open her sex, warm and wet and waiting.

When he presses into her at last, her eyes snap wide open, their chestnut irises swallowed up by her pupils. She lets out a small moan – sharp and low – and digs her fingernails into his back, fighting the urge to squirm under his invasion.

Tate's own eyes fall shut as he pulls out, then sinks deeper into Violet's searing heat. She's so wet it's fucking ridiculous; his cock slides into her easily, filling her up, throbbing inside of her enough to make both of them whimper in pleasure. The delicious drag of their bodies is enough on it's own to have him coming unhinged.

"I shot the teacher first. Through the door. He was trying to save them, so…" Tate chokes out, bucking his hips against Violet's, pressing still deeper inside her, addicted already to the way she feels around his cock. "…Bang, in the fucking chest. He was twitching on the ground when I walked inside."

Violet's twitching now, beneath Tate. Her back arches, hips lifting off the mattress to take him deeper inside her until he's buried to the hilt, grinding her clit against him. He obliges her, taking a break from the story to thrust into her, hard and slow, his head dropping to the pillow beside hers, trailing hot kisses down her neck, across her collarbone, out onto the freshly marked canvas of her shoulder.

"I shot this goth girl hiding between the stacks. Shot her right in the head – her temple exploded, side of her head totally caved in. I watched her for a bit, watched the blood pool on the floor around her. Her eyes were still open. She told me she believed in God, but I could tell she was lying."

He's fucking into Violet hard now, pumping in and out at a steady pace, only just managing to keep his voice even enough to continue the story. His hands are gripping her narrow hips, fingers pressing bruises into the porcelain skin stretched over her bones as he snaps his hips forward in a frantic rhythm. She feels _so good_. He can already feel the burning sensation in the pit of his stomach; the combination of Violet, wet and tight and desperate for him, and the recalled excitement, the pleasure he'd taken in the murders… - it was almost enough to send him over the edge. But he couldn't. Not yet.

"I killed them all. The metalhead, the nerdy kid who was trying to call for help…The jock tried to stop me. He stood right in front of me, told me to quit it. I had my shot gun out by then- _fuck_, Violet…" He hovers above her, looking down at her wide, innocent eyes before dropping his mouth to her breast, flicking his tongue over her small pink nipple, his hands smoothing up her ribs. "You need to know how it feels…" he murmurs into her breasts, voice bottoming out into a groan "…how good it feels, the weight of the gun, knowing what you can do with it. How amazing it is to know you're doing those people a favor. That their blood is being spilled in pursuit of something good. Something noble."

His hips rock in time with hers, her body swelling up to meet his with each thrust. She's letting out small, staccato gasps and chewing her lower lip to keep quiet, her nails raking hot, red lines down his back.

"His girlfriend screamed as his body hit the floor next to her. I think she pissed herself, she was so scared. I wanted to tell her… that she didn't need to be… but I couldn't make the words come out. I just kicked the table away. Pointed the gun at her. She was crying. Her blood splattered my face as she went down…"

Violet is clinging to him desperately, her hands at his hips again now, pulling him down against her, writhing up against the delicious slide of his body. He's lost his train of thought – lost the story for the moment. Every thrust is another body. Every pant and moan another kill. He's fucking her hard, thinking about bullets…about the way they enter through the flesh, into holes deep and wet with blood, before exploding inside the victim's body. He's thinking about the way they lie, twitching, paralyzed; how close pain is to pleasure.

Tate's forehead is bowed against her shoulder when Violet tightens around him, her body rocked by violent spasms that herald his own orgasm, sudden and intense, milked from her insides. His eyes slit open as he comes inside her, his body shuddering over hers, hips pumping forwards with each fading tremor. He looks her in the eye, and sees it again; a perfect moment of darkness, understood. Accepted. Loved. She's moaning softly, still grinding against him as the last trembles of ecstasy pass through them both until they're woozy and sluggish.

And then it happens. The wounds begin to appear. Tiny holes forming in his torso, in his upper chest until his entire front is peppered with them. The bullet-holes don't hurt; he can barely even tell they're there until he feels the blood, hot, wet, sticky, pouring down his ribs in thick ribbons, spilling out onto her naked body.

Violet looks shocked. Her face goes white, as if she's seen a ghost (ironic, really, he thinks). She looks, for a minute, as if she wants to retch again – but her body is paralyzed by pleasure, her senses still deadened from the orgasm. And there's something else, too. A curiosity. He's amazed to find her reaching a hand up to stroke along the length of his side, her fingertips coming away crimson.

Slowly, deliberately, Violet brings a blood-stained finger to her lips, tracing the outline of her mouth with Tate's blood.

She licks her fingertip.

"I walked out of that school like a God." Tate finishes, his voice low and ragged from exhaustion, "…like a fucking saint. And they made me a martyr, in this very room." He looks down at himself. At the blood streaming freely from the memory of his wounds. It's soaked into the covers around them. Transferred from his undead flesh to her pale, flawless skin.

Violet is silent for a few minutes. Her expression is blank – closed off. He's scared, then, for the first time. She seems to have gone somewhere distant. Somewhere unreachable. Like before.

When the light returns to her eyes, it's a fire that he's never seen before.

Violet sits up, her hands resting on his naked hips. She looks at him –looks _into _him.

"Tate," she says, softly. He can hear his heart hammering against the walls of his chest. This will be it. The moment where she tells him he's gone too far. The moment where she tells him to leave her alone forever.

He stares at her, his bottom lip beginning to tremble.

"I love you," Violet says, reaching up to push the damp hair out of Tate's eyes.

"I'll always love you. No matter what."


End file.
